Judging Decisions

A note on decision making. A decision is good or bad not based on the outcome but based on what information was available at the time the decision was taken and what heuristics were applied to reach a particular decision. Tweets like these are quite common. “If you had invested 10$ in X 10 years ago now you would be a millionaire”. And that is evaluating a decision based on its outcome. But what you should be thinking is what information did you have then, what was missing, what could have been predicted given the information you had, what mental models and principles were at play and why that happened. This kind of thinking is crucial to improve how you think and to make it better. Dwelling on your past decisions for most is a more tiresome exercise than a fruitful one. To apply this without messing it with your head requires a good amount of self-awareness and discipline.